Read "In Memoriam E. H" by Robert Louis Stevenson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I knew a silver head was bright beyond compare, / I knew a queen of toil with a crown of silver hair.
Garland of valour and sorrow, of beauty and renown, / Life, that honours the brave, crowned her himself with the crown.
The beauties of youth are frail, but this was a jewel of age.
Life, that delights in the brave, gave it himself for a gage.
Fair was the crown to behold, and beauty its poorest part --
At once the scar of the wound and the order pinned on the heart.
The beauties of man are frail, and the silver lies in the dust, / And the queen that we call to mind sleeps with the brave and the just; / Sleeps with the weary at length; but, honoured and ever fair, / Shines in the eye of the mind the crown of the silver hair.
Honolulu.